


if these delights thy mind may move

by dollsome



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-11-02 04:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20621168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: It’s not exactly good manners to fall asleep at a party—especially one as wonderful and unlikely as this—but Anne supposes Gilbert has a good excuse.





	if these delights thy mind may move

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to the prompt "Anne/Gilbert + 'You look so beautiful right now'" from allegroandoldlace on Tumblr.
> 
> I’d like to thank actual legend Lane Kim, specifically in Gilmore Girls 1x08, for really informing the Confused Teenage Crushing energy herein.
> 
> Title from “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Marlowe.
> 
> Edited slightly as of 9/23/19 to change Bash and Mary's baby to match their canon baby, Delphine, because I'm nothing if not irrationally meticulous! (I'm sorry for un-existing you, Baby John named after Gilbert's dad!)

It’s not exactly good manners to fall asleep at a party—especially one as wonderful and unlikely as this—but Anne supposes Gilbert has a good excuse. He’s been working himself to the bone lately between school and helping Bash run the farm and apprenticing with the doctor. Sleeping at night hasn’t been a sure thing either, thanks to Bash and Mary’s baby. Anne can’t imagine a being more wonderful than little baby Delphine, but she still remembers very well from her old life how your soul withers when an infant won’t stop crying.

And so while it would be _nice _to have Gilbert awake during what is possibly the only garden party Marilla will ever let Anne host at Green Gables, she decides not to hold it against him.

While everyone else amuses themselves with the croquet set that Diana had brought over, giddy from the almost-summer air and the exquisite little luncheon of cucumber sandwiches and strawberry jam tarts, Anne dips into the barn. She’s looked everywhere else already.

Her hunch proves right: Gilbert is in the hayloft, fast asleep on his back. Anne laughs softly to herself as she steps closer, careful to keep her footsteps quiet. Belle whinnies a little hello.

“Shhh,” Anne tells her.

Belle shushes. She understands right away, and gives Anne an intent look that says _I wouldn’t dream of waking our guest._

Either that, or she wants to eat the flower crown of daisies perched on Anne’s head.

Maybe both. Horses are very complicated creatures.

Anne stops at the edge of the hayloft and considers Gilbert. It’s a funny thing to see your academic rival when they’re asleep. All of the annoyingly good-natured competitiveness is gone. He looks so peaceful, his lips slightly parted, his chest rising and falling softly as he breathes.

Now that he’s not awake and irritating the living daylights out of her (lately with how _not_ irritating he can be), she supposes she can see what Diana and Ruby mean about him being so handsome. He dressed especially nice for the party. She thinks he might have combed his hair too; his dark curls look particularly sleek.

Ruby would probably volunteer to have her house burned down again in exchange for a moment like this. It’s quite a romantic thing, objectively speaking, to have a young man asleep in your barn.

Like something in a poem.

It’s as if Gilbert’s a tragic wanderer—which he more or less was, for awhile—and Anne is the fair maiden of the house, coming out to feed the horses and discovering the poor man seeking shelter from the cold night. (It’s a warm spring afternoon now, but never mind that.)

Any fair maiden’s heart would go out to such a weary traveler. She would have to come close and inspect him to make sure he hasn’t frozen. The maiden might reach forward, just to see that he’s awake and not dead (people are dead quite often in poems), and press her fingers very lightly against his soft-looking curls—

Anne gasps aloud and pulls her disobedient hand back.

Gilbert sleeps on, inconveniently like a poem made flesh. His hair—so smooth and dark, the exact shade she yearned for once—still seems to cry out to be touched.

And so Anne does the only thing she can: she takes off her flower crown and places it at a jaunty angle on his head.

Just a prank between chums.

It’s a perfectly ordinary party-day shenanigan. If her fingers brush his hair in the process, well, who can notice a thing like that when they’re in the middle of a shenanigan?

“Gilbert,” she says, because she doesn’t quite trust what her brain will dream up next if she lets him keep sleeping. “Hey, _Gilbert._”

Gilbert opens his eyes. “Oh. Hi, Anne.” He smiles a sleepy little smile at the sight of her that she does not care for whatsoever. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep too well last night, but I didn’t want to miss the party. Which I guess,” he concludes with an apologetic quirk of his lips, “I did anyway.”

Gilbert Blythe has very expressive lips. Who ever heard of such a thing in a person? It’s simply not practical.

So Anne forces herself to look up at the flower crown instead.

It _is _pretty spectacular.

“What are you staring at?” Gilbert asks.

“Oh, nothing,” she says angelically. “You just look—” A laugh blooms right out of her mouth, like jewels and flowers in that old fairytale. “—so beautiful right now.”

“Thank you?” Gilbert’s mouth quirks in another little smile, this time bemused. He reaches up and discovers his new headwear. After a few moments’ analysis with his fingers, he says, “I’m betting this is yours.”

She imagines Gilbert placing the flower crown gently on her head. Brushing her hair behind her ear to make sure she looks every bit the perfect May Queen.

“No,” Anne says hastily, “you keep it.”

Then she turns and sprints out of the barn.

“Race you!” she calls over her shoulder as she bursts out into the sunshine. Her friends pepper the lawn in the distance, brilliant as flowers in their best clothes. What a relief it is to be back in the world with other people in it.

A relief. That’s all.

She doesn’t know what look Gilbert has on his face now, or what his mouth might be doing. But after a moment, she hears his quick footsteps behind her, valiantly accepting her challenge.

Another laugh spills out of her mouth, bright with joy.

+

“Gilbert,” says Mary when he gets home in the dimming evening, looking up from stirring soup on the stove, “how was your party?”

“What the devil’s on your head, Blythe??” Bash demands, snickering, from where he sits at the kitchen table holding the baby. Then his face lights up. “Oh, wait. No need to ask. There’s only one person who could be responsible for this. One redhead, to be precise.”

Baby Delphine laughs, delighted by her father’s amusement, and tugs at Bash’s beard.

“Leave the boy be,” Mary scolds lightly.

“Yes!” Bash says to Delphine, pouting at her. “Leave your poor father be!”

“I meant Gilbert.”

“Oh no,” says Bash, “I’m never leaving him alone about _this_.” He points at the flower crown.

“It was a gift,” Gilbert says calmly. A bit _too_ calmly. “A strange gift. But still.” He pauses to pat Delphine on the head, then announces, “I’d better go study. I’ll see you at supper.”

Bash and Mary smile at each other once Gilbert’s disappeared.

“Oh, he’s got it bad for that Anne Shirley-Cuthbert,” Mary says, laughing.

“In my experience,” Bash says, dancing his way over to her with Delphine in tow, “there’s nothing so good as having it bad.”

Mary rolls her eyes, but kisses him gladly until the soup starts to boil over.

+

In his bedroom, Gilbert inspects himself in the mirror.

What does it mean when a girl puts a flower crown on your head? Does it mean you’re one of the girls? Does it mean she likes you? Flowers are traditionally a pretty romantic thing. What, exactly, does it mean when a girl says you’re beautiful but laughs while she does it?

He sighs and turns to his schoolbooks, which make his brain infinitely less tired no matter how complex they get.

He places the flower crown carefully on his desk first, though. Miss Stacy says that nothing keeps you awake mind, body, and soul like nature.

Gilbert can think of one other thing.

+

“I can’t believe you _gave him _your _daisy__ crown_,” Diana says that night, nestled in bed at Anne’s side. Marilla had allowed Diana to spend the night too, but only because Diana had agreed to help clean up after the party.

“Stop making it sound like that,” Anne orders, frowning.

“I’m only saying what happened.” Diana lets out one of those little huffing noises that make her sound like somebody’s mother.

“It was a prank. A _hilarious_ prank.”

“When you put it on him as he slept,” Diana persists, “was his hair exquisitely soft to the touch?”

“Good_night_, Diana.” Anne rolls over on her side, back to her friend.

“You can never tell Ruby you touched his hair. It’s as good as kissing, more or less.”

“Sounds like less to me,” Anne grumbles.

“You’d be surprised. These things have their own elaborate rules.”

Anne groans into her pillow. “Why is everyone so obsessed with kissing? Nobody even sees the romance in flower blossoms or the doomed beauty of the Lady of Shalott anymore. It’s all courting madness now. Just because you’ve kissed Jerry—”

“You swore on _Jane Eyre_ never to mention that again!”

“—doesn’t mean the rest of us have completely lost our marbles. I assure you, Gilbert Blythe is just an academic nemesis and after-school friend who I thought would look diverting in a daisy crown. That’s all. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight Anne,” says Diana. Anne can hear the smile in her voice.

_Do _not _dream of Gilbert Blythe, _Anne orders her mind. _Or his stupid exquisitely soft hair._

There. That should do it.


End file.
